


and it was paradise

by KelpietheThundergod



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel & Sam Winchester Friendship, Gen, Implied Castiel/Dean Winchester, M/M, Post Episode s10e14: The Executioner's Song, Season/Series 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 01:44:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3469796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KelpietheThundergod/pseuds/KelpietheThundergod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The days go, the time does too, and it goes quietly.</p><p>It makes sense. To keep a low profile. To hole in, recover. Only, Sam doesn't feel like that's what they're doing. What Dean's doing. </p><p>Dean's face is still awfully bruised, but he smiles at Sam in the morning. His brother is standing in the kitchen like it's a perfect island in a calm sea stretched wide and endless azure to the horizon. Dean's eyes are sad, but his smile is warm. He doesn't talk much, but when he does it's calm, almost careful. He says he's tired a lot.</p><p>Sam always let's Dean talk, does not press him when he doesn't. Dean seems grateful, his smile just a little too wide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and it was paradise

 

 

 

**and it was paradise**

 

_and it was paradise_

_now thunder in the east you run_

_down run far_

 

_soft gold glow of the fields_

_it never lasts_

 

 

 

 

 

 

The days go, the time does too, and it goes quietly.

 

It makes sense. To keep a low profile. To hole in, recover. Only, Sam doesn't feel like that's what they're doing. What Dean's doing.

 

Dean's face is still awfully bruised, but he smiles at Sam in the morning. His brother is standing in the kitchen like it's a perfect island in a calm sea stretched wide and endless azure to the horizon. Dean's eyes are sad, but his smile is warm. He doesn't talk much, but when he does it's calm, almost careful. He says he's tired a lot.

 

Sam always let's Dean talk, does not press him when he doesn't. Dean seems grateful, his smile just a little too wide.

 

 

 

There's a clock in the kitchen, and the time on it's been off for at least four days now. Just a couple of minutes behind, but it unnerves Sam every time he sees it. Normally, Dean would have noticed and fiddled with the thing until he'd find out what was wrong and correct it. Maybe the batteries just need to be changed. Or maybe the whole thing is broken and beyond repair under the surface. Maybe it's gonna get worse from now on, more and more time missing. And then one day, it's gonna just. Stop.

 

Sam hasn't told Dean about the clock. He tries not to think about it either, actively avoids looking at it at times and then catches himself staring straight at it instead.

 

Worse than the missing time though, is how this has been going on for days, and Dean doesn't seem to even notice the clock being wrong.

 

 

>

 

 

 

 

 

 

San checks his phone often, and his mails.

 

He knows, realistically, that Charlie will need more time tracking down that book. He'd just feel so much better, having something concrete in his hands. He's conducting his own research on the book of the damned and everything related to it, but results are feeble and nebulous, most of it teetering between too vague or too arcane to be of use without having the source material there for reference.

 

Sam has vetoed hunting until Dean has at least healed up somewhat, and Dean hadn't protested much. He seems to be sleeping a lot. Often, Sam finds him in the garage tinkering with the Impala when he goes looking for him.

 

He finds he doesn't like to find Dean there. It should be normal, but now, somehow it is not. It sends a feeling of foreboding through him, and it's hard to play over. Hard, to look at Dean's quiet smile and his grease-streaked hands, and not accuse him of running. Because Dean is not. He's been trying his best, like always. Has given everything and accepted losing. Accepted being lost.

 

They could have cut him down right then and there and he would have let it happen.

 

 

 

Sam doesn't have dreams of it. Not of Dean's hands soaked in blood and shaking, not of Dean smiling at him with that horrible look in his eyes when he'd walked up the stairs, alone. Not of the hole through his brother's chest, not about how the blade and the mark had drained all of the warmth from Dean and stranded him in a wasteland of rage.

 

He dreams of waking one day, walking through the halls, and finding Dean's room empty. Empty of him and of everything else, like he had stopped existing in this place.

 

 

>

 

 

 

 

 

 

The conversations with Cas are better and worse, in their own way.

 

Sam is beyond grateful that Cas is there, that neither of them are alone in this. But he sees his own fear and sadness reflected back at him in Cas' concerned questions and text messages. Reads it in Cas' pauses, when Sam trails off because he can't tell him anything more either.

 

From some of Cas' answers, he suspects but doesn't know for sure, that Cas is also in direct contact with Dean. Whatever is going on there doesn't seem to provide Cas any more assurance than Sam has that Dean is actually on the right side of alright. Dean doesn't exactly say he's alright, but also not that he isn't.

 

In fact, Dean isn't saying much at all.

 

Or maybe he is, or tries to, but Sam listens to the silences more. How they seem to be growing louder, almost roaring in his ears.

 

 

 

Cas is actually in the bunker tonight, but he'd come here so late Dean had already been asleep at that time, and he and Sam had both silently agreed not to wake him. Their conversation has already died down minutes ago, and Sam has been staring at the few pages of research on the table without actually seeing them. Cas seems to be lost in his own thoughts, though several times he has looked up and towards the doorway, an action downright depressing in its unconscious yearning.

 

Still, Sam almost flinches when Cas breaks him out of his brooding, concern in his voice, “You should go to sleep too, Sam. It's really late.”

 

Sam breathes in deeply and leans back in his chair, picking his phone up from the table to check the time. Four minutes after two am. In the kitchen, it will just read two. Like those four minutes are gone, haven't happened yet. Aren't happening, where Sam is, because by then he'll already be somewhere else.

 

He drags a hand over his eyes, the flashing LED lights still bright behind his lids but already evaporating to hazy flashes, “Yeah, you're probably right. Thanks, Cas.”

 

He stands up, closes his laptop and shuffles the papers under it. Cas stands up slower, he looks down at the table, then back to Sam. “You know it's not your fault we haven't found anything new so far. Don't... beat yourself up over it, Sam.”

 

And he says it with such earnestness that Sam has to smile, even though it's small and tired. He is glad, that they have Cas by their side for this thing. Glad, that finally Dean has some other person to see all of him, and stick by his side through whatever comes.

 

It doesn't change how stuck they are, how they are getting more stuck and slower and quieter every day.

 

Doesn't change how angry it makes him, that after everything, there is supposed to be nothing he can do.

 

 

 

Cas says he can stay until after breakfast tomorrow. Sam nods at him, grateful, then wanders down the hallway to his room.

 

Inside, it's colder than normal. Irrationally, that makes him angry too.

 

 

>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Sam had been about five, Dean had taught him how to read the clock.

 

There'd been a big round ugly one in a motel room with mint colored walls and too thin bed sheets. Dean had been patient, far more patient than Dad, though his explanations were kind of fumbling and his arms too short to adequately point at the clock's hands showing the hour and minute and second. Still, Sam had listened, rapt and and fascinated. And although he still needed practice, he had felt like he'd uncovered a great and fascinating secret afterwards.

 

It had frustrated him, back then, when Dean would tell him the time and he would check and find that it hadn't been exact. Three minutes more, three minutes less. Dean had always shrugged it off and said it wasn't important. Maybe when you were boiling water or waiting for a cartoon to start, but not in normal life.

 

He'd been a kid, they'd both been kids, and it had astonished and frightened him, how Dean could be so flippant about time when his whole life could be measured in it.

 

 

 

Now, the days go and Dean still hasn't fixed the clock. He looks at it, and either doesn't notice or doesn't care. It's such a small thing, and Sam could do it himself. He could. Wouldn't even have to ask, just open it up and find out what is wrong. Fix it.

 

But he doesn't. Tells himself to wait. He wants Dean to notice the missing time, to care about it. To take it in his hands and make it run again, and then hang it back up where it's supposed to be.

 

 

>

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dean starts talking more again, they start looking for hunts again.

 

His brother has been occupied with the oven for a few days now, something or other about the heat that was off and that he's determined to fix up again. Sam tries to be quietly supportive, relieved to see Dean active and aware of small things like this again. He tries to be cautious about it, but it gives him hope.

 

 

 

 

The next morning, he comes into the kitchen to see that the clock is gone.

 

Sam calls for his brother, but gets no reply. He finds Dean, finally, in the garage, barely to be seen with how he's halfway disappeared under the Impala.

 

“Yeah, I took it off the wall. It's not like anyone actually needs it.”

 

His brother's voice from under the car sounds hollow. Like he's not barely a foot and a half away from Sam but somewhere completely different, somewhere not here at all.

 

Sam says something back in reply, something distracted and meaningless, he has no idea what it is. His feet bring him back through the hallways, back to the kitchen. He moves forward, but his hands clench every time he catches sight of it.

 

The wall, empty and unmoving and bereft of time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> poetry is my own


End file.
